I’ve started to build a Youtube channel and I realize that I search existing videos many of my early influences can be found. One of my first searches with for Buckminster Fuller.
I started reading anything I could get my hands on by Buckminster Fuller when I lived in Japan in 1970. Japan – in its rush to be as futuristic as possible – was the perfect setting. Bucky said things that I had not heard before. He said that we can use design science to make the world work bringing everyone around the world out of poverty and to a standard of living level equal to what the world’s greatest powers now enjoy. He went on to prove Malthus and the common belief of scarcity in the world as quite wrong.
When I returned to the States I immediately sought him out and I was fortunate to meet Bucky and hear him speak countless times. I worked on a number of documentaries about him and we celebrated our mutual birthday several times with him as well. I joined him and his friends once for a week long conference in Bali. Bucky and Bali: it doesn’t get better than that.
Every dinner with Bucky was preceded by him drawing on the table cloth or whatever was around in his attempts to explain synergetic mathematics to me. He was clearly a man 100 years ahead in his thinking.
I encourage anyone to read his books or view videos in which he appears. His language may take a little while to get into but the “big bang” realisations that you will eventually get listening to him will be well worth your patience. He can change the way you think about everything.